In the wake of the news.

Rite of summer at an end

THREE LAKES, Wis. — Well sure. Of course. Absolutely. Ray Meyer technically is supposed to remain in the golf cart. Everyone agrees on that. Those are the doctor's orders, after all.

But outside of Dr. J, Doc Rivers and Dr. Jack Ramsay, what would a doctor know about the subtleties of the pick and roll? And clearly, the player standing here on the asphalt court does not understand that once he makes contact on a pick, he should move immediately to the basket. So Coach Ray is out of the cart quickly, or as quickly as his leaky heart valve will allow.

"Go to the basket, son!" he pleads, looking completely crestfallen that this rudimentary basketball skill, this fundamental building block of the game is not being fully grasped. The look on his face says, Why can't Johnny read?

"When that kid learns this and gets back to school, he'll kill the competition," Meyer says proudly a few moments later.

The kid is 9.

As far as Meyer's family knows--the family that doesn't want him out of that golf cart either--it's another quiet morning of drills in another year of Ray Meyer's Basketball Camp. But he can't help himself, and so he's in and out of his vehicle like a state trooper. He can't help himself, and that's why he's a coach and always will be a coach, even when he shutters the place for good Monday, the day a basketball institution will say goodbye to the basketball institution he started in 1947.

If you're a male of a certain age--say, anywhere from 30 to 60--who played basketball competitively or hoped to, you probably have heard of Meyer's camp in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. This is where boys came to learn the game from a master. This is where city kids stared wide-eyed at the brilliant stars in the night sky, where they later fell sound asleep in a sweet, basketball-induced slumber.

Bob Pettit was a camper. So was Dan Issel. So were Dave Corzine and Mark Aguirre and Eddie Johnson. So were about 20,000 boys aged 9 to 16 over the last 54 years. They mostly came from the Chicago area and Wisconsin, and they were surprised to learn that heaven is located in the middle of nowhere and comes equipped with five courts and 20 baskets. Some campers came from other states, a few came from other countries, looking for wisdom from the famous DePaul coach. One came from Iceland ("Had to bathe him in sun block," Meyer says.)

Competition, that same thing Meyer has lived for all these years, is the exact thing killing his true love. Where once the camp was one of a handful from which Chicago-area players could choose, now there are too many options. Other camps. Summer leagues. Traveling teams. Year after year, Meyer could count on eight one-week sessions a summer with 180 players each. Now he oversees four sessions with 50 kids per session. The economics don't add up, and even a romantic basketball coach can see that.

His health isn't helping matters either. The heart valve problem makes him short of breath, and his five children are worried. He'll be 88 in December. His head and heart valve understand the situation, the rest of his heart doesn't.

"I have a lot of mixed feelings about closing this," he says. "It's part of my life. I spent every summer up here."

This is another page turning in Ray Meyer's life and he's sick of the sound of riffling pages. He retired as DePaul's coach in 1984 after 42 years, 724 victories and two Final Four appearances, but the camp kept him occupied. Now that is leaking away, too, and he doesn't know what will fill his days. It worries him.

"Maybe I'll travel," he says.

Man in the wilderness

A priest from DePaul who had a summer home in the area suggested Meyer start a basketball camp for kids. The idea sounded good to the coach, who came up with $500 as a down payment for an $18,000 property on Little Fork Lake in 1946. He and his late wife, Marge, eventually built a home here.

He cleared the area with his own callused hands. He "invited" one of his DePaul players, Ed Mikan, to come up for a few days, and they cut down 200 trees with hand saws to make room for the courts and cabins. The area was so densely wooded that when they woke up for the second day of tree clearing, they initially couldn't find where they had cut the day before. Their hands vaguely resembled ground chuck.

Meyer spread and rolled the asphalt for one of the courts on a 90-degree day. I'm trying to picture Rick Pitino doing this.

"Everything here is hand-made, but it's crude," Meyer says. "There isn't anything we bought. We made the backboards. I can't do that type of thing anymore. That's part of the problem."

He started with 30 kids in 1947. During the camp's heyday, entire high school teams would come to Three Lakes for tutoring. Judges from Chicago would ask Meyer to take in kids who were a misdemeanor away from juvenile detention facilities. Sometimes he had as many as 40 boys each session who couldn't afford the camp. Not good for business. Good for the kids, though. Good for the soul.